Huge Truck Bomb Kills At L_111035929701973743

A guerrilla detonated a huge truck bomb in downtown Baghdad early Wednesday morning, between the al-Sadeer Hotel and the Ministry of Agriculture, killing himself and at least three others, and wounding dozens.

On Tuesday, guerrillas gunned down a high-ranking Interior Ministry official.

In further incidents on Tuesday, UPI reports “Gunmen killed a senior Iraqi police officer and his son in a Baghdad neighborhood Tuesday as they headed to work, security sources said . . . Also Tuesday, armed men assassinated the director of a Baghdad hospital in al-Jihad quarter.In the meantime, witnesses said gun battles erupted in the Sunni city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, between insurgents and U.S.-backed Iraqi national guards as a result of large-scale raids and searches conducted by police. Initial reports said three people were killed in the clashes, which started overnight and continued until daylight. “

The Iraqi army found 15 beheaded corpses, both male and female, at a former military base near Latifiyah south of Baghdad. These appear to be the remains of Shiite pilgrims who had been on their way to Karbala, who were captured and killed by Sunni guerrillas. AFP also reports, “An oil pipeline feeding Baghdad’s Dura oil refinery was blown up in Jorf al-Sakhr, 60 kilometres (46 miles) south of the capital, said state oil official Muayaad al-Shemmari. Five soldiers were killed overnight in Iskandariya when a coffin attached to a car’s rooftop exploded near their checkpoint, the Iraqi army said. Four women with suicide belts were also arrested in Iskandariyah and confessed to working for the militant group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, it added.”

The Ramadi Madness Video showing abusive behavior by US troops. The ACLU continues to call for a Special Counsel, apparently convinced that the tone of behavior of some US military units in Iraq toward captured Iraqis was set by the civilians who run the Department of Defense. The Palm Beach Post has acquired some of the Ramadi Madness video and posted it to its web site.